The present invention relates generally to database systems, and more particularly to providing improved visibility to feeds associated with records in an on-demand enterprise services environment.
Running a company typically requires maintaining data related to the company's business, such as sales numbers, customers, business opportunities, and other information pertinent to sales, revenue, networking This data is stored on a database that is accessible to various individuals belonging to that company. Often, it is more effective for the company to have a third party maintain a database containing the data, as opposed to the company maintaining the database itself. Accordingly, in some cases, the database can be a multi-tenant database which maintains data for multiple companies.
Providing both social and business networking within and between these companies offers an invaluable tool in the current technology based infrastructure. Not only can the networking facilitate communication between individuals, but it can also facilitate communications between groups of individuals, both within a single company and between several different companies. With the abundance of information provided from each company, a user cannot effectively and efficiently search and view the pertinent information available across a network. This is not only due to the amount of information stored on the system, but also to the amount of information being added to the system by each user at any given time. Though a user may review specific data on a particular day, that data may change by the next day, or even within the hour. Additionally, new information may be added to the system which is not known to a user. Accordingly, the company may wish to provide efficient and easy access of information, such as the ongoing conversations regarding a specific account or business opportunity, to its employees and to other users of the database without those employees having to navigate the entire database in a time consuming manner. Since each user may have interest in a specific area of the company, it is also important for that user to be able to easily access all relevant information and other users involved in that area.
Therefore it is desirable to provide systems and methods that overcome the above and other problems relating to the accessibility of data on a database systems, such as the searching of publicly available data, the viewing of that data and the connecting of users on an external server, such as a multi-tenant database.